Finalists for Gov.'s Celebration of Innovation announced

The Arizona Technology Council has announced the finalists for this year's Governor's Celebration of Innovation, a yearly event spotlighting the state's leaders in the technology sector. The award ceremony is also supported by the Arizona Department of Commerce and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano.

Last year's celebration, held at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, was dominated by students, innovators and companies from Tucson. This year, the winners appear more spread out amongst Phoenix and Tucson.

Although Gov. Napolitano spearheaded the creation of GCOI, she has missed the event the past two years, instead, providing a recorded speech to the audience of nearly 1,000. While it remains to be seen if the Governor will attend, this year's event has been refocused, offering a strolling dinner during the award ceremony. 

This year's event will be held at the Dodge Theatre in downtown Phoenix on Nov. 13, 2008.

Mirroring a year-long shift in the international technology industry, GCOI will highlight green technologies and cleantech in its "Shift to Green" theme. The VIP after-party will be held in the "Green Room," a tongue-in-cheek reference to the hosting facility.

Internationally recognized architect, artist and philosopher Paolo Soleri will be presented with a lifetime achievement award for his longtime presence supporting Arizona's environmental sustainability needs. Alaina Levine, University of Arizona College of Science director of special projects, chaired an independent committee to choose the finalists. 

The finalists in their respective categories

Individual Award Finalists:

William F. McWhortor Community Service Leader of the Year:
Daniel D. Von Hoff, MD, TGen Clinical Research Services at Scottsdale Healthcare
Jeff Morhet, InNexus Biotechnology Inc.
Terree Parlett Wasley, ASU Technopolis

Ed Denison Business Leader of the Year:
Steve Irons, ImageTag, Inc.
Roy Vallee, Avnet, Inc.
Jeff Morhet, InNexus Biotechnology Inc. 

Company Award Finalists:

Pioneering Innovation:
Telesphere
Aviation Communication and Surveillance Systems
Microsoft Corporation

Green Innovator of the Year (NEW):
i-Linc
Trilogy by Shea Homes
Global Research Technologies LLC

Innovator of the Year, Start-Up Company:
Flypaper Studios, Inc.
FetchBack
Ubidyne, Inc.

Innovator of the Year, Small Company:
Succeed Corporation
Kutta Technologies, Inc.
Infusionsoft

Innovator of the Year, Large Company:
Raytheon Missile Systems
IBM Corporation

Innovator of the Year, Academia:
Phoenix Mars Mission
Biodesign Institute
Center for Applied Nanobioscience

Young Innovator of the Year Award Winers:
The "Best of the Best" of the Arizona Engineering and Science Fairs (grades 9-12) for the year 2007. Each of these students will receive a $1000 scholarship to further enhance their education. 

Steven Fan, Tucson High Magnet School
Shemonti Hasan, Hamilton High School
Adrian Laurenzi,Tucson High Magnet School
Smitha Ramakrishna, Coronoa del Sol High School 

Teacher of the Year Award Winner:
Kenneth Zeigler, Eagle Point School

Northrop Grumman's Sierra Vista wing gets $16.9M contract

Northrop Grumman Technical Services in Sierra Vista was awarded a $16.9 million contract for work on its Hunter unmanned aircraft system.

The contract is for further Hunter hardware to be used for interoperability verification. The entire project will be conducted in Sierra Vista and is expected to be complete by Sept. 17, 2011. The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command in Redstone Arsenal, Ala. is the contracting agency.

The Hunter is the U.S. Army's first unmanned aircraft system, field-tested in 1996. It is now used primarily by the military presence against the Global War on Terrorism.

Raytheon receives $220.5M Naval defense contract

Raytheon in Tucson has received a $220.5 million contract modification by the U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command for additional work on the company's MK15 Phalanx Close-In-Weapon System. Raytheon will provide upgrades, conversions, system overhauls and additional hardware.

The Phalanx CIWS is a land and ship-mounted anti-ship missile defense system. It can detect, track, engage and destroy most surface and land based threats. The system uses radar and infrared sensors aligned with rapid fire, self cooling, diesel power gun barrels. It's most likely targets are ship-based missiles, helicopters and high-speed surface threats.

The system fires multiple types of rounds and missiles, depending on its configuration. The maximum range for a 330-mm round is approximately 4,500 meters, according to U.S. military statistics. Most systems can fire between 3,000 and 4,500 rounds per minute, according to Raytheon.

Phalanx systems with lighter rounds have a close kill-range, while missile-based systems are greater. Because of the close proximity to the ship or land mount, the Phalanx is considered the last line of defense when targeting a missile.

The Phalanx, or similar CIWS systems, heve been installed on nearly all U.S. combat ships and is used by 22 other nations, including Spain, the United Kingdom, Turkey and China. The Phalanx's first use was in 1991 during the first Iraq war.

Work for the project will be conducted primarily in Louisville, Ky., Andover, Mass. and Tucson. The contracted work is expected to be complete in Sept. 2012.

Here is a video of a land-based Phalanx system:

Google closing its Tempe office

Google Inc. will close its Phoenix office on Nov. 21, company officials said Friday. Google opened the office in 2006 after much acclaim. But the projects the company engineers were working on were "highly fragmented" at the site, which is located in Tempe.

Alan Eustace, Google senior vice president of engineering and research, announced the move on Google's blog, saying:

"We opened our Phoenix office in 2006 and hoped that it would develop to support many of our internal engineering projects, the systems that make Google, well, Google. But we've found that despite everyone's best efforts, the projects our engineers have been working on in Arizona have been, and remain, highly fragmented. So after a lot of soul searching we have decided to incorporate work on these projects into teams elsewhere at Google."

Google had been trying to increase the number of engineers working at the site. While the company first imagined the operation would eventually build to more than 600 employees, less than 100 were hired. The company chose Tempe because of the close proximity to Arizona State University's thriving student base and the city's WiFi system, which is now defunct.

The company will work to transition the existing "Googlers" to other company locations and jobs.